New antibiotic buys medicine time in the never-ending fight against superbugs
After several decades fighting battles against superbugs, the medical world has accepted that it will be very difficult to win a war that every year causes more than 1.2 million deaths worldwide. The main reason is biological. No matter how effective the new treatments are, if they are used massively, natural selection will always push some strains of microorganisms to develop antibiotic resistance, which leads humanity to an endless fight where the goal is to buy time.
If new infections are avoided as much as possible — through prevention measures or new vaccines — the medical world buys itself time by reducing the use of antibiotics. If each infection is treated only with the indicated drug, more time is gained by slowing the development of resistance. And if enough time has been gained, when bacteria become immune to the available treatments, the next effective antibiotic will have already been developed. And in this way, medicine will be able to minimize the impact of superbacteria, perhaps not totally winning the war, but emerging victorious from multiple battles.
On April 22, the European Commission authorized a new antibiotic to fight these battles: Emblaveo, a medicine developed by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Abbvie in cooperation with the European Union and the United States. The drug can be used to “treat complicated intra-abdominal and urinary tract infections, hospital-acquired pneumonia and infections caused by certain types of drug-resistant bacteria [Gram-negative bacteria],” according to the European Commission. “It will therefore contribute to tackling the serious problem of antimicrobial resistance and provide patients with treatment options where currently there are few or none.”
